One of the bizarre things I'm reading in this Sex and the Weimar book is how ubiquitous homophobia was and how the killing of eg gay Nazis, was as much driven by trying to save face in the midst of scandals where social democrat anti-fascists outed gay officials as anything.

It's one of those things where it's clear the Nazis would have never tolerated homosexuality in the long run, but it's clear that there was a lot more going on than people normally assume when discussing the history of fascism.

I say bizarre because it runs counter to both the (homophobic) myth that the Nazis were full of and supportive of LGBT people (that these myths seem to have been spread widely by anti-fascists challenging the idea of the Nazis bringing Germany morality back into line) and also..

..the fact that they *did* have high ranking well known gay members is obviously an indicator that they weren't necessarily particularly stand out homophobes compared with others.

They were however brutal and murderous all the time, and would kill people without much reservation

There's also a lot of discussion of how specific forms of homophobia were particularly motivating for the German right - particularly effeminacy among men was stigmatised as a form of degeneracy, and it's probably the fact that Röhm was very masc4masc that got him as far s he did

It feels a lot like there was this fascist loyalty to gay masculinity where so the real problem was those (Jewish) queers out there agitating to be too publicly gay and flaunting it in people's faces (ie Hirschfeld's movement for gay and trans emancipation).

Horrific epilogue to that chapter.

On the last chapter now. Marhoefer argues against the idea that sexual liberation was a significant factor in the rise of the Nazis and I think with pretty good justification actually. The previous 5 chapters have covered the period up to the burning of the Hirschfeld library..

.. and while immediately after that point massive crackdowns on sexuality happened, the Nazis already had a lot of power and (argues Marhoefer), purging LGBT up to that point wasn't a big selling point of the Nazis with their high ranking gay officer.

Rather the purges were just something that happened *because* the Nazis were fascists once empowered to start enacting their vision of purity on the world.

Like this seems to sum up the point pretty well. Their most rabid conspiracy theory version of their sexual conservatism coincides with the period they did really poorly, and starting to sound like more trad conservatives was the point they started getting more votes.

I should mention, alongside homosexuality and transvestism, there's a great deal in this book earlier on about sex work, sex worker self organisation during the period(1919-1935ish), class interest ruptures between different sorts of SW and various other stuff.